We are pleased to announce our investment in Avid Ventures Fund I, the debut fund of emerging manager Addie Lerner. Based in New York, Avid backs exceptional founders at the Series A and B stages building transformative technology companies. Avid takes a hands-on approach to help  founders evolve early-stage companies into proven growth businesses with their highly collaborative investment strategy. Avid has already made five investments in companies accelerating the credit, identity verification, co-working, healthcare brokerage, and mortgage industries. 

Before founding Avid, Addie was an investor at General Catalyst, General Atlantic, and Goldman Sachs. We were introduced to Addie through our friend Craig Thomas of Investure at the 2020 Upfront Summit. We were drawn to Addie’s experience, network, hustle, and unique approach to early-stage investing. Founders with whom we spoke raved about Addie and how helpful she’s been to them, regardless of whether they’re part of Avid’s portfolio. Addie gets in the trenches with founders and companies on everything from detailed modeling work to impactful customer introductions.

Tali Vogelstein, a former investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, joins Addie.Together, they’ve built Avid’s initial portfolio, including investments in Nova Credit, Alloy, The Wing, Nava, and Staircase. Furthering Avid’s collaborative investment approach, the team works hands-on with founders serving as an “Outsourced Strategic CFO.” Avid serves as an extension of the Finance and Biz Dev functional teams, helping with everything from strategic growth modeling to hiring to customer, partner, and advisor introductions.

We are thrilled to partner with Avid and welcome the team into our network of Partner Funds as a potential collaborator and follow-on investor. You can read more about Avid here (Fortune), here (Forbes) and here (Pitchbook).

We are pleased to announce our investment in Gig Wage’s Series A financing. We invested alongside Green Dot (NYSE: GDOT), Continental Investors, our friends at Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and our partner fund, Techstars Ventures. Based in Dallas, TX, and founded by Craig J. Lewis, Gig Wage is building financial infrastructure to support the companies and workers that make up the world’s growing gig economy. 

Today, in the US alone, the 1099, or “gig,” economy is estimated to include between 65-75 million workers. This number continues to grow as we experience shifts in how, when, and where we work. The existing infrastructure to support workers and the companies with whom they engage was not built for the gig economy and the pace at which it moves. Gig workers have different needs, especially for when and how they get paid. Gig workers often need to get paid sooner than the traditional bi-monthly paycheck, and many of them do not have a bank account to receive payment.

Gig Wage offers modern payroll, payments, and banking to companies and contractors. Their payroll product enables businesses to seamlessly and instantly pay contract workers, while offering optionality around payment timing that serves as a mechanism for contractor retention in an ever-competitive market.

Gig Wage is also tackling the challenge of paying the many unbanked and underbanked workers that participate in the gig economy. In partnership with Green Dot, Gig Wage will introduce its debit card and other products and tools specifically tailored to workers and employers in the gig economy.

We met Craig when Jaclyn served as a mentor in the Techstars & Western Union Accelerator. Gig Wage fits into our Glue theme alongside companies like AvidXchange and Ordermark and is relevant to our Marketplace theme, given their focus on marketplace customers. We’re thrilled to partner with Gig Wage in their mission to drive economic empowerment for all. 

We are pleased to announce our investment in Landing’s recent Series B financing. We led the round, with prior investors Greycroft and Maveron also participating. Landing is transforming apartment living from one of the most complex and inefficient experiences in modern housing into a seamless delight. Founded by serial entrepreneur Bill Smith, the company provides its members access to a nationwide network of furnished apartments with flexible lease terms currently available in 75 U.S. cities. 

You can think of Landing as “Living-as-a-Service.” They connect the dots in a fragmented housing market, creating value for landlords, property managers, leasing agents, brokers, and renters. Landing’s service increases cash flow for landlords, drives down vacancy percentages for property managers, and increases commissions for leasing agents and brokers. For renters, Landing’s flexible membership model delivers a value-added experience that includes 24/7 concierge services and managed home sharing, all while massively decreasing the upfront costs associated with traditional long-term lease agreements.

We first met Bill in 2018 when Moody participated in Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest Tour in Birmingham, AL. At that time, Bill was the CEO of Shipt which he had recently sold to Target for $550m. Moody eventually worked with Bill on Birmingham Bound and served with him on Governor Ivey’s Alabama Innovation Commission. Bill’s skills as a leader and his #GiveFirst approach to supporting Birmingham’s startup community have been awesome to witness.

Bill has scaled and successfully exited businesses since he founded Insight Card Services in 2009. He has a keen eye for recognizing when industries are on the cusp of innovation, and the situation is no different with Landing. He has pulled together a solid leadership team that includes alums from Shipt along with OYO and WeWork. Their collective expertise positions them well to deliver a delightful experience to their customers.

Landing is in our Marketplace theme, with companies like Rover, SeatGeek, Xometry, The Pro’s Closet, and Havenly. Welcome Bill and the Landing team. We couldn’t be more excited to be on this journey with you!

January 05, 2021 10:27 AM Eastern Standard Time

BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Crucible Acquisition Corporation (the “Company”) announced today that it priced its initial public offering of 22,500,000 units at $10.00 per unit. The units will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (the “NYSE”) and trade under the ticker symbol “CRU.U” beginning January 5, 2021. Each unit consists of one share of Class A common stock and one-third of one redeemable warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one share of Class A common stock at a price of $11.50 per share. Only whole warrants are exercisable. Once the securities comprising the units begin separate trading, the shares of Class A common stock and redeemable warrants are expected to be listed on the NYSE under the symbols “CRU” and “CRU WS,” respectively.

The Company, led by James M. Lejeal, Brad Feld and Jason M. Lynch, is a blank check company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses. The Company intends to focus its search on target businesses in the software technology industry, prioritizing cloud-based recurring revenue business models.

Credit Suisse is acting as sole book-running manager for the offering. The Company has granted the underwriter a 45-day option to purchase up to an additional 3,375,000 units at the initial public offering price to cover over-allotments, if any.

The offering is being made only by means of a prospectus. When available, copies of the prospectus may be obtained from Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Attn: Prospectus Department, 6933 Louis Stephens Drive, Morrisville, NC 27560, Telephone: 1-800-221-1037, Email: usa.prospectus@credit-suisse.com.

Registration statements relating to the securities became effective on January 4, 2021. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

The offering is expected to close on January 7, 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains statements that constitute “forward-looking statements,” including with respect to the proposed initial public offering and search for and/or completion of an initial business combination. No assurance can be given that the offering will be completed on the terms described, or at all, or that the Company will complete an initial business combination. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Company’s registration statements and preliminary prospectus for the Company’s offering filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Copies of these documents are available on the SEC’s website, www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Investor Contact:
Jim Lejeal
ir@crucibleacquisition.com

We are pleased to announce our recent investment in Parallel Domain alongside our friends and partners at Calibrate Ventures and Costanoa Ventures. We are excited to invest in another breakout company from our Partner Fund portfolio.

From self-driving cars to delivery drones, autonomous systems have the opportunity to significantly improve the quality of life for billions of people. Training and testing these machines to perceive the surrounding world, however, is neither scalable nor reliable. The current approach suffers a critical bottleneck: collecting, labeling, and curating data.

Autonomous vehicle companies alone spend billions of dollars per year collecting and labeling data. Companies enlist millions of outsourced human labelers to draw and trace the annotations that the algorithms need to learn. Curating these datasets to include the right distribution and frequency of samples becomes exponentially more difficult as performance requirements increase.

Nearly every application that utilizes computer vision faces this challenging pattern when it comes to data. By turning this real-world problem into a software solution, synthetic data provides a step-change in accuracy, flexibility, and safety.

The Parallel Domain platform, composed of a suite of APIs and developer tools, enables customers to generate synthetic sensor data on-demand, providing essential performance improvements while reducing developer iteration time. Used by some of the world’s top AI companies, auto manufacturers, and delivery companies, Parallel Domain provides value through the full computer vision development cycle, from initial prototyping and model training to testing and post-deployment maintenance. Data that was once time-consuming, expensive, and dangerous to collect and label is now at a developer’s fingertips.

The team, headed by CEO Kevin McNamara, is a deeply experienced group of synthetic data and machine learning specialists from Apple, Pixar, Toyota, Electronic Arts, and more.

Parallel Domain is our second foray into the challenging field of training and testing for autonomous systems. We are happy to apply the lessons and learnings from our prior investment to help the company and their team optimize the platform for customers. Parallel Domain falls into our Glue theme, along with portfolio cousins Mapbox and Fritz.AI.

A big “Thank You” to John Cowgill and the Costanoa team for introducing us to Parallel Domain after leading the seed financing. We’re thrilled to officially welcome Kevin and the Parallel Domain team to the Foundry Family!